Clock unstable

[obj]

You probably moved from a border area where you were in two mlat regions, to being in only a single region.

[ninjaneer451]

Thanks obj!

[Jay714]

I am having the same problem. My MILAT won’t stay connected and it says that my local clock is unstable. I have tried many times to get NTP to run without success and I have not had any luck starting the NTP pool. It tells me that it is in the Debian Pool?

Thanks

[jonhawkes2030]

MLAT doesn’t use NTP.
It uses special timing packets from aircraft and the clock within the dongle. If there aren’t enough aircraft visible then it won’t work.
It is also possible that the USB bus is having issues or the RPI has power problems.

Maybe post the exact messages, removing any personal information first.

[Jay714]

It says “Warning local clock source is unstable”.

If I run timedatectl it shows that the UTC and my Locat Time are right and that the system clock is synchronized and that NTP is inactive.
Maybe it that I don’t have enough activity,

Thanks for your response

[curtko]

@obj

Synchronization stats for receiver fAT-b827...#327:
 PeerID Distance State    Frequency Error    LastReset Expires
 13      290.3km Stepped   -73.8ppm    226ns     16.7s -      
 48      298.7km Stepped   -76.2ppm      0ns      0.0s -      
 59       47.5km Stepped   -75.4ppm    126ns     18.8s -      
 130       8.4km Stepped   -74.3ppm     87ns     17.5s -      
 146     319.9km New       -74.8ppm      0ns      0.0s -      
 175      24.1km Stepped   -73.7ppm     64ns     18.8s -      
 177     228.9km New       -73.2ppm     97ns      0.5s -      
 182      10.1km Stepped   -87.9ppm     69ns     20.3s -      
 206     225.1km Outliers  -74.0ppm   3672ns     32.6s    1.0s
 210     259.9km Stepped   -74.0ppm    208ns     17.4s -      
 249      19.5km Stepped   -74.5ppm    127ns      8.0s -      
 286     218.1km Stepped   -73.7ppm      0ns      0.0s -      
 292     221.4km Stepped   -73.7ppm      0ns      0.0s -      
Pairings: 13  Usable: 6  Unstable: 5
Inhibit: FULL  Instability: 43

Is there some way for us to look up our MLAT data as seen by your server that you showed in this message?

[obj]

No, that is internal data. Is there a specific problem you need looking at?

[curtko]

No, that is internal data. Is there a specific problem you need looking at?

No, that’s OK. I switched to a different antenna and my MLAT stability seems to have improved.

[cbdagency]

I moved my pi and antenna to a different room and changed it from the wifi extension to the main wifi, and the MLAT suddenly decided the clock is unstable… any ideas why and/or how to fix it?

[bodenweid]

I had the same error message (local clock source is unstable).
The USB-connection was okay, but the nut on the cable to the antenna was a little bit disengaged.
When I re-fixed it, the MLAT worked well again.
Perhaps I touched the cables when I changed the NAT-HDD beside it.

Conclusion: This error message can be caused not only on USB-errors, but also from the connection from the USB-dongle to the antenna.
This could be helpful.